The present invention relates to a heat-developing and transferring apparatus which performs a series of operations including application of an image forming solvent to a heat-developable photosensitive material or an image receiving material, developing the image by application of heat and transferring the developed image so as to form an image on the image receiving material.
An image recording apparatus which produces a color image by making use of a heat-developable photosensitive material is known. An example of such an image recording apparatus is disclosed in Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication No. 75247/1984. In this known apparatus, a color image is formed on an image receiving paper by a process which includes exposing a heat-developable photosensitive material to an image, conducting heat development for developing the image on the photosensitive material, superposing the photosensitive material after heat development on an image receiving material, and conducting transfer of image to the image receiving paper by application of heat.
In order to improve the transfer efficiency, a transfer assisting agent, i.e., an image forming solvent, such as water is applied to the image receiving paper before it is superposed on the heat-developable photosensitive material. After the transfer of the image by application of heat, the image receiving paper is peeled off the heat-developable photosensitive material. The image receiving material immediately after the separation from the photosensitive material has not been dried, i.e.,still wet. Such wet image receiving paper causes various problems such as sticking when stacked, contamination by finger patterns or other contaminants when picked up by fingers, and so forth. Such drawbacks are not mentioned at all in Japanese Unexamined Pat. No. 75247/1984.